It was going to be the most famous party our street had ever seen. In two days my sister, Darci, was turning seven, and the buzz was the whole neighborhood would be showing up, invited or not. The Coconuts were building a slippery slide.

"Ho, man," I mumbled, squinting up at the sun. "Can it get any hotter?" I'd been trying to think of the perfect birthday present for Darci, something good, something that would really mean something. But it was too hot to think, and I was coming up blank.

At the bottom of our sloping lawn, a slow-moving river sparkled in the sun. It was the color of rust and almost as wide as half a football field.

Darci and Carlos, Julio's five-year-old brother, were poking around in the swamp grass looking for toads. Carlos had followed Julio down to my house on a pair of homemade tin can stilts.

I popped up on my elbow. "Hey, anyone want to go swimming in the river?"

Julio made a face. "That stinky water?"

I shrugged.

Maya shook her head. "The bottom is all mucky. Who wants to step in that?"

They were right. It was smelly and mucky.

Still, you could cool off in it.

"Looks fine to me," Willy said. He was new to Kailua. His family had just moved to the islands from California.

"Go," Julio said. "Jump in. But don't swallow it."

Willy frowned.

We called it a river, but it really wasn't. It was a drainage canal that carried runoff from the lowlands out to the ocean. I took my skiff out on it all the time, a red rowboat that sat in the swamp grass below us. I got Darci to go with me sometimes, but she didn't like being out on the water. She wasn't a good swimmer.

"So when's Ledward coming?" Willy asked.

"Soon."

Mom was still at work, but her boyfriend, Ledward, was coming over to build the slippery slide for Darci's party . . . a monster slippery slide that would start with a high ramp at the top of our yard and run all the way down to the river.

Carlos stopped searching for toads and looked up at us. The tin can stilts were slung around his neck, two big cans with strings on them. He took them off and stepped up onto them, then clomped up the slope.

Julio groaned and closed his eyes. His brothers drove him crazy. He had four, all younger than him.

"Wanna hear a song?" Carlos said, coming over to us.

Willy laughed.

I squinted up at Carlos. "Not really."

"Go ahead, Carlos," Maya said. "You can sing your song to me."

"My mom gave me a nickel, she said go buy a pickle, I did not buy a pickle, I--"